Deltarune Chapter 5 Weird Route: How It Triggers and Ends

The Weird Route is the hidden “Side B” path in Deltarune that follows Noelle across multiple chapters, and in Chapter 5, it takes a sharp turn. Instead of expanding into a new Dark World, the route ends the chapter almost as soon as it begins, skipping the festival and the entire flower-themed Dark World you would normally explore.

Quick answer: You can only enter the Chapter 5 Weird Route if you completed the Weird Route in Chapter 4. When the chapter opens, force Kris out of bed, meet Noelle at the lake, and keep selecting “Proceed” while crossing the water until the screen reads “INSERT CHAPTER 7 SIDE B.” To cancel out and play the normal route instead, stop selecting “Proceed” once the screen starts fading to white.

Image credit: tobyfox(via YouTube/@MelonGod)

Prerequisites for the Chapter 5 Weird Route

The route is a chain. Chapter 5 only continues it if you carried the Weird Route through Chapter 4, and Chapter 4 in turn requires completion data from the Chapter 2 Weird Route. There is no way to start fresh in Chapter 5.

Chapter	What locks the route in
Chapter 2	Freeze enemies with Noelle’s IceShock, ending with Berdly frozen in Cyber City
Chapter 4	Direct Kris to force a thorn into Noelle’s hand at Noelle’s House
Chapter 5	Continues automatically from Chapter 4 completion data

If you did not complete those earlier steps, Chapter 5 plays the standard story with the festival in Hometown and the Field of Pink and Gold Dark World.

What changes at the start of Chapter 5

The opening is unmistakable. The chapter begins with the red dot on screen and Noelle slowly saying, “THANK YOU.” Kris sleeps in and misses the festival entirely.

Get Kris out of bed. Toriel asks if they are okay and tells them to come downstairs to eat. You have to slowly push Kris up yourself, and their movement is heavily slowed. Every dialogue box that isn’t spoken by another character is blank, with Bread being the only exception.

Leave the house. Susie tells Kris that Noelle wants to meet at the lake. Susie also offers to walk the festival with Kris, even though everyone has already gone home, and checking the stands has her recap what she and Noelle did while Kris was asleep.

Obtain the Bread from Sans, then head to the lake. Noelle thanks Kris for helping her break out of the routine she felt forced into, then insists on crossing to the other side of the lake to do “something crazy” — the place the two of them always wondered about as kids.

The lake sequence and the route ending

The lake crossing is the trigger that closes out the chapter. As you go deeper into the water, the screen shakes harder, and the textbox border turns increasingly red. Your only option is to keep choosing “Proceed.”

Begin crossing with Noelle. If you pick “Stop,” Noelle overrides it and forces “Proceed” anyway, so the choice doesn’t break the sequence on its own.

Keep selecting “Proceed” as Kris and Noelle hold hands and sink deeper. The shaking and the reddening border continue as the water rises over them.

Continue until the screen cuts to black and an old television screen appears, reading “INSERT CHAPTER 7 SIDE B.” The game then exits to the file select screen.

You know it worked when the chapter generates a completion file for that slot, even though the route has no save points along the way. This is also where the route ends much earlier than usual — the entire Dark World segment is skipped.

How to abort the Weird Route and play the normal chapter

The route can still be cancelled right up to the final moment in the water. The trick is timing, not menu choices.

Keep selecting “Proceed” during the crossing as normal until the screen begins fading to white.

Once the screen starts going white, stop selecting anything. Let the screen fully fade out instead of spamming “Proceed.” Waiting long enough after Kris and Noelle’s heads go under is what aborts the route.

Watch the recovery sequence. Noelle says she was wrong and that it wasn’t a dream. Kris wakes up at the table with Susie and Noelle singing the French Fry song. The scene then cuts repeatedly to Noelle saying “Nothing changed” over shots of her and Susie at the lake, before returning to Kris asleep on the table with Susie holding ice cream and Noelle gone.

After that, the normal route resumes from the point where Noelle leaves to check on Rudy, with only minor changes. The track ocean.ogg loops until you enter the Dark World, overlapping wind_highplace.ogg after you leave the lake area.

What the route means going forward

The “INSERT CHAPTER 7 SIDE B” message points the path squarely at a future chapter. Many players read it as the Weird Route being paused in Chapter 6 and resuming in Chapter 7, matching the on-screen prompt.

One practical detail to know: completing the route changes how the game labels your data. Affected save files are tagged with a “_b” at the end. Because of how the chain works, the only way to keep the route alive is to carry that completion data forward through each chapter rather than starting any chapter on a clean file.